A supply chain management computing system may be used to plan, implement and control the operations of a supply chain as efficiently as possible and may span all movement and storage of raw materials, inventory, and finished products.
Availability check, also known as ATP (availability-to-promise) check, is an important tool within supply chain management in order to provide an answer to the question if a requested quantity of a ware, for example a material or product, is available on a requested date. For determining if a ware is available, or if an overconfirmation is present otherwise, stock, planned inward movements and planned outward movements, like for example sales orders, may be considered. In the case of customer demand, a sales order is a customer request to the company for the delivery of wares, for example goods or services, at a certain time.
In make-to-stock environments, confirmations can usually be made based on product availability due to sufficient supply on stock. However, when dealing with make-to-order environments, there is often only little or no supply on stock. When a demand, or also referred to as requirement, is received, the availability check may have to be not mainly based on checking product availability (product availability check (PAC)), but on checking capacity availability (capacity availability check (CAC)) of one or more resources needed to produce the ware. In cases where there is no stock at all present, the availability check may merely be based on checking the capacity availability.
In an example manufacturing supply chain management computing system, the system may include capacity availability check suitable for checking the availability of a ware, the ware having a resource to produce the ware. In a typical case, when a customer demand, like a sales order, is received, a planned production order is created and is directly associated with the demand (lot-to-lot environment). The production order may then be included into a production plan using finite scheduling and by doing so checking the availability and capacity of the resource needed. Each time a demand is received, the production plan is changed.